by Martin Davey
Pascal left the two farmers and came over. “Find anything?” Dorian asked.
“Five men,” Pascal said. “One old and and grey with shadowed eyes. Four others, two of them big enough but they all seemed friendly and easy going.” He pointed to one of the men, one with thick brown hair and big hands. “Farran there, he stopped to talk to them. Said they were looking for work and Farran pointed them this way.”
“He doesn’t look too upset about it,” Dorian said.
Pascal shrugged. “Not a well liked man in these parts apparently. Neither was his taskmaster Geyan. There’s somebody else missing, too.”
Landros raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“Somebody called Tiege. Young man, everybody likes him.” Here Pascal glanced to the two women Torra had stolen. “Nobody’s seen him for a few days and he deals with everything for Farmer Mashin, he’d definitely have been around in that time.”
“A few days? Three? About the time the Guardian was here?” All Landros had were dead ends. Ysora had escaped him again. The longer he was here, the longer Elian was in the hands of the Clerk. He took a breath, flexed his fist.
Torra left the girls with a final witticism and came over, still smiling. The smile annoyed Landros more than ever. “West,” Torra said.
“What’s west?” Landros couldn’t keep the impatience out of his voice.
“Seven riders leaving here, all riding west.” Torra pointed the way out the door, across the fields. “Shalla there,” he nodded back to one of the women now talking to the farmers, “Was in the barn, we won’t say what she was doing, but she heard riders in the distance and looked out to see seven of them all headed west, out to Farmer Lucen’s place, past the old river and Jerrod’s Hill.”
“You sure she saw seven?” Dorian said. “We heard there were only five of them.”
“Five plus Ysora and this Tiege who’s gone missing.” Landros sucked on his lip as he thought.
Torra nodded. “She said there were six horses, one of them carrying two riders. Said they were riding like the Nameless One himself was on their heels.”
Landros walked to the door and leaned in the doorway looking out to where Torra had pointed. He could see the red barn where the girl had been , the paint fading, the fields about it green and yellow, the crops still and listless in the greyness of the day, not a breath of a breeze to be felt. The road wound through the fields, bordered by hedges and leading out from the farm, rising up the hill in the far distance. Why would these people want the woman? Where would they take her? He wanted to turn around and ask Dorian and the others, ‘What now?’ He knew what he should do, turn around and go back to Clerk Killian, tell him of his failure. Yet another failure. What price would he pay? What price would Elian pay? He pulled his gloves on tighter and turned back to his men. “We’ve lost them,” he said.
Nobody disagreed with him.
“We do know the road they took, we could try following them,” Pascal said, sounding as though he was doubting his own words as soon as they were out of his mouth.
“And how would we find them if we did? Dark is coming, they could split up and scatter to the four winds and we’d never know it. How many old men with grey hair or young women with long dark hair are out there?” Trust Torra to tell of the hopelessness of their cause.
“You’re right about one thing, lad.” It was one of the farmers speaking. Landros hadn’t paid him any attention, and now he looked at him, he saw that he was older than he thought, grey speckling the hair about his ears, his eyes creased from the sun and too much smiling. “Dark is coming and it comes pretty quickly in these parts at this time of year. You might be better off spending the night here and heading back to Katrinamal in the morning. Go now and you’ll only end up risking breaking your horses’ legs.”
Landros felt cold rise from his stomach to his throat. Elian. “No. We can’t, we have to get back today.” But then even if they did get back, would the Clerk let her go, knowing of his failure?
The farmer shrugged, “It’s a fair ride and it’ll be dark in less than an hour, but...” he spread his hand as though there was no accounting for the stupidity of Captains of the Watch.
“He’s right Landros, if we leave now, we might never get back at all. We can’t be riding around in the dark over rough ground.”
So Dorian finally had some ideas about what to do. Landros looked to Pascal and Torra for help, saw no support there, especially from Torra who looked like he had just sneaked the girls a wink. Elian. What would the Clerk be doing with her? Stealing her memories, ripping the thoughts from her very mind? His chest felt tight, difficult to breathe. “Alright,” he said, the word feeling like a betrayal of Elian. “But we’ll head back to the inn, see if Len can find a room for us.”
“That pig sty?” Torra’s smile was wiped clean from his face and Landros sighed, did the men question Dorian at every turn like this?
Even the farmer laughed. “You want to stay there? He’ll have spare rooms to be sure, but I don’t think you’d like to stay in them, Captain. Stay here, there’s rooms enough for you all and I think all of us will feel safer with the Town Watch here after what’s happened.”
One of the girls giggled at that. They were getting on Landros’s nerves. He looked to Wes for help, but found none there; the young lad was standing in a corner next to a table with a vase of flowers on it, even the flowers looked to be wilting and fading. And, to be truthful, when Landros looked out the window, it did look like night was already closing in. He’d never have thought it was so late. He raised a hand in surrender. “Alright,” he said. “But I want us to be riding at first light.”
“Good,” the farmer clapped his hands together. “I’d have hated to see you all ride out into the night like that. Let’s find you some rooms.”
Landros’s room, when he saw it, was much like the rest of the house. Faded and worn. Rushes that smelled of rivermense and oakenroot, bedding that was dulled red and white faded almost to grey. Pictures on the walls worn from the sun and showing the Keepers in all their masked glory. Landros was grateful there were none showing the black emptiness of the Nameless One as he sat on the bed and pulled off his boots.
As soon as he sat back on the bed, he was up again. How could he rest when Elian was a captive of Clerk Killian? Something about the man, about his impatience, set Landros’s teeth on edge. And Elian was his prisoner. He walked to the window, pulled back the curtains and looked out on a world of darkness. The farmer had been right, night did fall quickly here.
Where was Ysora now? It was difficult to imagine her anywhere except for on her cliff looking out across the Sea. The only time he had seen her she had been a thrashing, writhing thing, hair covering her face, her screams almost drowned out by the thunder and the wind and the rain. He could have left Gerard to Dorian then, strode through the mud and picked her up, held her to him and calmed her, pushed her hair from her face. How different his life would be now. Clerk Killian had said that Clerk Lovelin would be alive if only Landros had done that. But how? How could Ysora have saved the Clerk?
Landros sighed and pressed his face closer to the window. It sickened him to think of Ysora with the people who had killed the Guardian, it sickened him to think of Elian with the Clerk. And what did he do to help them? Sigh and look out of windows and wonder what was happening to them both.
He sighed again and turned away, he needed sleep but he couldn’t with Ysora out there with the murderers. He was as responsible for her as he was for Elian. He had chased her away from her home near the Sea, she would never have been near this place and those killers if it wasn’t for him. Torches fluttered in each corner, crackling and smoking as they burnt. He remembered Clerk Lovelin not long before he died checking the torches, relighting them once they died. Was the Nameless One afraid of the light? Did it combat his dark magic?
Landros paced around the room again, his shoulders knotted and tight. He needed to go for a walk, to get some fresh air to clear his mi
nd, but one look at the thick darkness outside changed his mind. What was he now, afraid of the dark like some shivering child? Would he end up like his mother, rocking in a chair, never leaving home and talking to himself about Nameless Ones and creatures crawling in the dark? He would go outside, if only to prove to himself that he wasn’t afraid. He glanced to a painting of the crest of Keeper Jerohim. How he needed the strength of the gods now.
The knock on the door made him start, set his heart to racing. The knocks loud, like the time in Katrinamal when he had opened the door to find Feren standing there, thick blood leaking out of the hole in his head. Landros tried to keep his hand from shaking as he reached for the door.
Dorian looked cleaner than he had all day; he had found a fresh vest from somewhere and looked like he had washed his hair. “Are you alright?” Dorian asked, standing straighter now, looking more like the Captain he had been for all those years.
Landros realized he was still standing in the doorway holding the door, his body set rigid. He had been expecting Feren or the Nameless One, he realized now. He tried to smile and stepped aside to let Dorian into the room, “I’m fine. Trouble sleeping.” There was a noise above them, a muffled thumping as though somebody was moving furniture, and somewhere a woman screamed and laughed out in the darkness. Landros thought of Torra and the farm girls.
Dorian moved past him, he must have found a bath, he smelled of pearsoap and jerrywine. He had taken the time to fasten his sword to his hip, Landros noticed. Perhaps he wasn’t the only one who felt the unease around the place.
The older man looked around the room, wandered over to the window and looked out on the darkness beyond. Landros watched him before closing the door. The torches fluttered in the draft. “So what is it you wanted, Dorian?”
Dorian turned away from the window, looked at the crests of the Keepers and then back to Landros. “I worry about you, Landros.”
Landros waited for him to say more, but when nothing was forthcoming, he sighed. “Worry about me? Why?”
Dorian moved away from the window. He looked bigger now, and younger. Landros suddenly remembered the Captain he had always known. A man who could be intimidating by his sheer manliness, how athletic Dorian could look just by the way he walked. The way Dorian looked at him made Landros suddenly feel young again. He stood straighter.
The torches fluttered, shadows dancing on Dorian’s clean-shaven face. “Why are we hunting this woman? Since when did the Watch leave the Sea? Since when did the Watch hunt women? Why, as soon as you became Captain was the Watch unleashed on this woman?”
All questions Landros himself had wondered. All questions he had no answer to. “Clerk Lovelin said you asked too many questions, he said ours is not to think, ours is to do.” The words sounded weak to his own ears. When the Clerk had said them, they had sounded right and true, the words of the gods themselves. Coming from his own mouth, they sounded weak and trite, shallow echoes.
“Clerk Lovelin is dead,” Dorian said.
Landros nodded, sorrow clenching his heart at the memory of the sword cutting down the Clerk. “How did you know? Clerk Killian asked that I don’t tell you all until we got back to Katrinamal.” He leaned back against a dresser thick with dust.
“Laraine told me.”
“Laraine?” Landros frowned at that, and then remembered. The woman with the grey hair and the black eyeliner. “Laraine?” he said again, “You’ve seen her?”
Dorian sighed and sat down on the bed, looking up at Landros, the red sheets creasing under his weight. “She came here, Landros. Came to find me, to find us. She needs to speak to you before it begins.”
Landros tried to gather his thoughts, his mind fogged by lack of sleep. “She wants to speak to me about the Clerk?” A bloom of fear spread in his chest. “Who is she? What does she want to speak to me about?”
“Laraine would be better telling you that.” Dorian watched Landros closely, seeming to watch his every move. The scraping noise from above had fallen to quiet and the entire house seemed silent. “She only sent me here to warn you of her coming, to see if you will at least listen to what she has to say.”
“She sent you?” Landros would once have thought that nobody could send Dorian anywhere. He’d never felt as distant from his old friend as he did now. One moment Dorian looked more like his old self and the distance between them lessened, and now he was speaking of this old woman with the painted eyes in hushed tones and running her errands for her. A thought suddenly occurred to him, “How did she know where to find you?” And as he looked at the old Captain of the Watch, saw his eyes shift at that question, a hand of ice tightened about his neck. “What have you gotten into, Dorian?”
No answer, but Dorian did stand, and his faded blue eyes showed a fixed resolve in them as he straightened his back. “All we ask is that you listen to Laraine, hear what she has to tell you.”
“And if I agree, then you have to run and fetch her, do you?”
Again no answer, Dorian’s eyes fixed on Landros.
Landros had seen that look before. He had no wish for an argument with Dorian. He sighed and lifted a hand, “I’ll speak to her if it will make you happy, Dorian.”
“My happiness isn’t the issue.” But Dorian stood more at ease, “I hope you will listen to what Laraine has to tell you.” And he left, a whiff of pearsoap and jerrywine in his wake. Landros wondered if Dorian was in love with this woman. The combed hair, the clean clothes, the soaps. He remembered them in the Fiddler’s Tree, the way Dorian had his hand on the back of Laraine’s seat.
He pulled a knife from under his pillow, slipped it into his boot. He lifted his sword from the dresser, looked around the room before standing it behind the door. He sat on the bed, ran his hand through his hair and then stood up again. He slid his knife from his boot, slid it back again. How did Laraine know where they had been? He didn’t like the answers he thought of to that question.
The paintings on the wall were faded from the sunlight. Paintings of the crests of the Keepers, of Keeper Risnar standing proud and tall among the fallen of the Battle of the White Peaks, Keeper Martuk racing through the skies to the Battle of the Weeping Walls. “Keepers watch over me,” Landros whispered. Why should an old woman frighten him so? He pressed his fingers to the crest of the Keepers. Maybe watching a Clerk be murdered by the corpse of his own mother, or having the Nameless One speak to him on a dark hillside had made him weak and worrisome, but he had vowed that night not to be caught unawares again. He planned to stick to that vow.
Dorian and Laraine didn’t leave him long to wait. The three torches fluttered as Dorian pushed the door open without knocking. Landros waited on the bed, his coat pulled back on and fastened to the neck. Laraine waited until Dorian was fully in the room before she deigned to follow. She wore armour of silver interlinked chains, a white cloak hanging from her thin shoulders, her grey hair brushed away from her face and black eyeliner around eyes the colour of lavender.
“Captain Landros,” she said, her voice deep and husky. She was a handsome woman despite her age, her skin tight over high cheekbones. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me tonight.” She moved easily in the thin armour, no weapon hanging from her hip.
Landros hadn’t risen to his feet as they entered. Now he did. The sword felt a very long way away behind the door. “Dorian tells me it’s urgent that you speak to me,” he said. He tried and failed to keep the distaste from his voice. She wore armour to come and meet him? What did the woman have to tell him that she thought she needed to wear armour?
Laraine spread her hands and smiled apologetically. “My apologies, Dorian always was a great friend, maybe he was a little too vehement on my behalf.” She smiled at Dorian, but the former Captain kept his eyes on Landros, his arms crossed.
“I’ve known Dorian all my life and never heard him mention you before, perhaps you weren’t as great friends as you thought?” Landros lifted a hand as he saw the woman about to form an argument against
that. She still had her poise about her, her back straight and her bare hands clasped together. “But what is it you want to speak to me about?”
Laraine took a breath, her chest rising. “You’ve been following a woman,” she finally said.
“Ysora Siran,” Landros said, trying to keep his voice level.
A single nod from Laraine. “Ysora,” she said. She was a tall woman, tall and straight-backed. She looked like she should have a title before her name. “We don’t want her falling into the hands of the Clerk.”
Landros looked to Dorian. No expression from the older man. “That’s a simple enough request seeing as I’ve no idea where she is.”
“She is on her way back here as we speak.”
Still no expression from Dorian. Landros nodded, trying to gather his thoughts, trying to keep his breathing steady as the fury rose within him like boiling water.”Here? Back to this house? Why?” There might be hope for Elian yet.
Laraine turned and walked around the room for a moment as though deep in thought, trying to think of the words to explain something to Landros. Her cloak rippled across her back, a blazing sun and a black tree. “She is important to us, to our cause,” she glanced to Dorian and then back to the floor again. “A great violence took place here eleven years ago and my...our people, think it is time for that violence to be redressed.”
Landros lost patience with the woman. She talked in circles. He turned to Dorian, held out a hand to him. “Dorian, what is this? Violence? She can’t be talking like this. Just because an old woman dresses herself in fine armour doesn’t mean she becomes a warrior fit to fight the gods. We do the work of the Keepers, if the woman does come back we have to take her to the Clerk. We have to do the work of the gods.”
Laraine had stopped now, her back to the open door, to the sword behind it. She said nothing, her back straight and her armour bright. She looked at Dorian expectantly.
Dorian looked like a different man after his bath and his change of clothes, all the tiredness had gone from his eyes. This was more like the intimidating, confident man Landros had known growing up. When he looked at Laraine, though, Dorian looked doubtful, unsure. “We don’t have time for this, lady, they will be here soon.”